AMA: Sentry Director of PMM, Alexandra Sasha Blumenfeld on Storytelling

It depends on the audience, medium, and the main goal of the story you’re telling, but a very basic framework I use—and one that I’ve found to be the most effective for business storytelling—looks like this: 1. State the pain/challenge – What’s the core problem or need? This draws the audience in by addressing something relatable. 2. Present the solution – How are you solving it, and what makes your solution different from others? This is the heart of the story where the value is communicated. 3. Highlight the benefit/results – Why does it matter, and what’s the impact? How is your approach better or more effective than alternatives? 4. End with a CTA – What’s the next step or action the audience should take? This framework is simple yet powerful because it hits all the critical elements: it identifies the problem, communicates a clear and differentiated solution, proves the value, and provides a call to action. It’s flexible enough to be used across formats—pitch decks, customer stories, blog posts, or internal presentations—while ensuring the message is clear, focused, and impactful.

To align storytelling with key business objectives in a way that feels authentic to your target audience, the first step is making sure your KBOs are aligned with broader business goals. In my experience, this only works when the whole business is focused on the same priorities and knows how to weave the story into their own content and conversations. Next, it’s helpful to know exactly which audience segment the story applies to. This is where shared messaging guides come in handy—they help keep everyone on the same page around who the product is for and what it solves. For example, if the goal is to boost revenue for a specific product line, I find it useful to answer these basic questions first: * Who is the target user? * Jobs to be done: What problems are they trying to solve? * Pain points: What challenges do they face with current solutions? * Your product’s solution: How does it meet their needs? * Differentiation: What makes your product stand out? * Value delivered: What benefits do users get? Once I have those answers and the team is aligned etc., the next step is the hard part—making sure the message is actually used/woven throughout the customer journey in a way that feels natural and not forced. Here are some ways I’ve seen work well: * Top-of-funnel content: Create educational content focused on the pain or common problems your users face and walk through a solution, with your product mentioned as a side note. * Customer or internal dogfooding content: I’ve seen success with these in blog posts, videos, social posts, and industry events. The focus should be on a user talking about a specific problem they encountered and how they solved it using your product (with the user as the hero and the product as a side note). * Working with sales: I’ve found it helpful to align on the right discovery questions with sales first to identify fit. Then, tailor demos to focus on the pain points that matter most to your audience, only showcasing the product if it makes sense. The key is that while we may be focused on pushing a specific product, if the user doesn't feel the pain, it doesn’t make sense to push it. Focus on solving the pain they do have, and the opportunity to expand will come later. By keeping everyone aligned with consistent messaging, the story feels authentic and relevant across all touchpoints—whether it’s in content, demos, or live conversations.

Driving buy-in for a new narrative style with the sales team shouldn’t happen in a marketing vacuum. It starts with working closely with sales leaders—and, depending on your organization’s size, your CRO should advocate and drive buy-in from the top down. While it might seem like a no-brainer to introduce a new process, timing is critical. If the sales team is focused on other priorities, pushing a narrative shift won’t gain traction (and unfortunately, you'll waste a lot of time spinning your wheels in the process). Once you have buy-in from sales, collaborate closely with sales enablement (if you have it). If not, start by defining the key components with a few select sales leaders. Once everyone is aligned on the format and framework, bring in key stakeholders from across the organization—product, SEs, and sales ICs—to test, gather feedback, and refine the narrative. By involving them early, they’ll feel like they have a stake in the process and will understand their role in shaping the new direction. The more involvement and ownership each group has in shaping the new narrative, the more likely they’ll adopt it and naturally incorporate it into their conversations with customers.

The short answer is: talk with customers. The storylines come from them. When you’re starting from scratch with a new product, I like to focus on finding at least three key use cases. These use cases show real problems the product solves, and you can use them in docs, content, demos, and conversations. To bring those stories to life, I gather insights from beta customers to make sure those use cases are real and relevant. Their stories add credibility. From there, we’ll then create short, point-and-click demos or 60-second videos showing how the product addresses a specific problem and delivers a solution. Ideally, these examples come directly from customer experiences, but internal dogfooding videos/written content works well too. By sticking to real customer problems and solutions, your story feels natural and connects with your audience from the start.

To make sure everyone internally agrees on what sets you apart from the competition, I like to break it down into layers. First, there's the one-liner: a simple, clear statement about how your approach to solving the problem is different. Everyone in the company should know this—it usually comes from leadership and ties into the company’s overall strategy. To keep it fresh and top of mind, it needs to be repeated regularly in all-hands meetings, internal communications, and whenever leadership speaks externally. For example, at Sentry, we focus relentlessly on building for our end user—the developer—something our competitors don’t do as well. You’ll hear that message reinforced in everything from interviews to social media posts from our leaders. Next, I focus on building out proof points to back that up. The key here is that these proof points have to be true and resonate with your customers. To do that, it’s important to tap into both customer and market research—understand why your customers chose you over the competition. This ensures the proof points reflect real-world experiences, making it easier for the team—especially those in customer-facing roles—to confidently talk about what makes your product stand out. When it comes to structuring the proof points, I like using Force Management’s framework: * Unique – Something no other vendor offers. This is where your product stands out as the only solution for a specific need. * Comparative – Features other companies might have, but that you do better or differently. * Holistic – These are the things that make customers feel good about working with you, like having a large user base or contributing to open-source projects. Once these are on paper, gather a few key stakeholders—like product, sales, and customer success—to review and get everyone aligned. Then, it’s all about repetition. Keep the messaging in front of the team regularly, and make sure there's a clear, single source of truth for everyone to refer to. By rooting your differentiation in real customer feedback and data, it becomes much easier to get everyone on the same page and confidently talking about what sets your company apart.

The first thing to ask is, who’s your audience? Whether you're speaking to a technical end-user or a business audience, always start by leading with the differentiated outcome or solution you unlock. This is the high-level message that sets the stage. A great example is Suno’s "Make a song about anything"—they don’t focus on their proprietary tech but the end result it enables. For a technical end-user, once you’ve established the unique outcome and problem your algorithm solves, follow up with the details—how it works, why it’s better, and what makes it stand out. Share the specifics while keeping the focus on the "so what". For example, Fly.io’s "Public Cloud Infrastructure. Modern Platform Endorphins." delivers the key outcome, followed by specifics in the subhead: "The most flexible and powerful compute platform on any public cloud. Fly Machines are hardware-virtualized containers... for a single HTTP request, or for weeks of uptime." The details highlight the how while still reinforcing the benefits. For a business audience, lead with the same differentiated use case but focus more on the outcomes. What does your solution deliver that competitors can’t? For example, focus on where or how your product improves their day-to-day compared to the existing way of doing things. Speak to the results first before diving into any technical specifics. In both cases, start with the high-level differentiation: * What problem does it solve that competitors can’t? Frame it around the unique challenges your audience faces. * Why is it better than other options? Highlight specific benefits like faster performance, higher accuracy, or unique capabilities * What’s the real impact? Share concrete results—reduced processing time, improved decision-making (don't just say increase in revenue or time..everyone says that). * Proof points - Show why your algorithm is the best: specific stats, the number of customers using it, or 3rd party acknowledgment. For example, "Used by over 1,000 companies to reduce processing time by 40%." By starting with the differentiated use case, you immediately grab attention and make it clear why your proprietary solution stands out. Then, follow up with the details that reinforce the message and show how it delivers real, measurable value.